Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke was the first of the four activists to address the audience. In a wide-ranging presentation, she began by emphasizing the central role of colonialism in shaping the experience of indigenous communities in the United States. “The reality is,” she said, “to talk about colonialism in North America, you must talk about native people. And you must recognize the relationship between development and underdevelopment. Somebody got rich, and somebody got poor. That is the history of this country.” She went on to point out the deep-seated irony embedded in the historical roots of the wealth of the United States as a nation. “This country became so wealthy because it appropriated somebody else’s land and resources – that would be ours. And there is a direct relationship between the fact that today native people – although we are landed people, we are the landed people of color on this continent – are the poorest people on the continent. That would not seem to make any sense. Really, theoretically, we should probably be the richest people.” The current state of affairs for indigenous people is, LaDuke argued, the result of the interconnectedness of institutions, policies, and practices that have systematically impoverished and devastated native peoples. “It was multinational corporations and public policies and the military and genocide” that have produced the current reality.
LaDuke focused on the sustained social and economic legacy of colonialism on the native peoples of the United States, effects that touch every aspect of individual and community life for Native Americans. “Anywhere you look in terms of the native community, everything you do not want to have – we have. The highest rate of unemployment – 65 percent, my reservation. 50 percent of the people at or below the poverty level. Indian arrest rate? Seven times that of non-Indians. . . . The highest rate of violence? That would be ours. Domestic abuse. Everything. Just all the bad stuff. We have that. Is that because we are stupid? No. It is because we are in a state of social dysfunction, and we are in a state of colonialism and neocolonialism.” Characterizing the psychic cost of this history, she said, “We have something that we suffer from. It’s called unresolved historic grief. . . . It means that in our community’s context, it means that you have this grief that is not acknowledged as being valid.”
Central to LaDuke’s presentation was attention to the historic and ongoing impact of the military on the lives of Native Americans, an impact that is simultaneously material and symbolic. Having recently visited South Dakota – “one of the most racist states in the country for Indian people; they’ve got that terrible Mount Rushmore stuck in the middle of it, which is such a blasphemy” – to work on a writing project about Wounded Knee and the massacre site there, LaDuke spoke about the deep tensions and contradictions represented by the U.S. military’s role in Indian country. She offered the especially poignant example of the medals of honor awarded to U.S. soldiers in the wake of the Wounded Knee massacre, linking this particular example to the broader issue of the ethical and political responsibility of the U.S. government to redress historic wrongs. “Do you know that there were 23 medals of honor awarded for the Wounded Knee massacre to the United States military, by the Army? Now what does that contrast with? Think about this. In World War I, there were 60,000 people from South Dakota that served in the war. Three medals of honor were awarded out of the 60,000 for South Dakota. Now isn’t that kind of a strange statistic? And the thing is that we cannot get the medals of honor revoked. They have not revoked them or removed them in any way. And that is kind of the tip of the iceberg in America. Issues of reconciliation. Issues of apology. [We] never even got an apology bill out of Congress . . . . They got an ‘Expresses Regrets’ bill. Why? Because apology might mean compensation. Apology might mean . . . – they actually said it in Congress – . . . [that] ‘other Indian people might come and say we did something wrong too.'”
But the military presence is not simply a historical issue but an ongoing legacy of neocolonialism. (“We can call it neocolonialism, right?”) As LaDuke explained it, “Almost every military base in the west is an old fort. And it is located right next to an Indian community. That is the reality. They say that the great Sioux nation, the Lakota nation – if honoring the 1868 treaty would occur – would be the second-greatest nuclear weapons power in the world. Because they have the entire strategic air force command within their territory.” Citing Alaska as an especially profound example, LaDuke argued that the military’s presence deeply affects the economic circumstances of communities at the same time as it radically alters the environment. “You have the historical issues of oppression related to the military. You have the continuing economic depredations of the military in your area – the taking and seizing of your land. The seizing of your civil rights. The seizing of your constitutional rights. [There are now] exemptions from pretty much any law, under the guise of 9/11. The military in Alaska does not have to report its toxic releases because of 9/11. . . . The United States military is the single-largest polluter in the world. Don’t forget that.”
She went on to discuss the profound environmental concerns affecting Indian communities. With so many resources to be found in native territories – two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on Indian reservations, along with significant measures of coal and petroleum – energy policy and the corporate interests that shape that policy have a deep impact on Indian lives. She cited the construction of hydroelectric dams on Indian lands, and the particularly devastating effects of the nuclear waste problem, a problem to be solved, LaDuke noted, with “the ‘dumping on the Indians’ strategy. Yucca Mountain, Skull Valley Goshutes – both of those communities totally proposed to get dumped on for nuclear waste. Ninety thousand shipments of nuclear waste driving across the country. So that is where we are strategically in terms of the military industrial complex.”
LaDuke joked about the relationship between native communities and the corporate and governmental forces pressing on them and about the challenges involved in trying to negotiate with these powerful forces: “At this conference for Indian people, this Canadian Indian guy said [that] sitting down and talking to the Canadian government about land or natural resources is kind of like sitting down and talking to a cannibal. You sit around and you can make as much small talk as you want, but in the end you know exactly what that cannibal is after.”
A recent threat to native peoples, where economics and the environment intersect, comes in the form of what LaDuke called “biocolonialism,” which threatens the ecological/biological diversity that exists in the environments of indigenous peoples around the world. She cited the efforts of community activists in South Asia to challenge attempts by corporations to file patents on the genetic structures of indigenous trees or basmati rice. “Almost every indigenous community is looking at similar challenges,” LaDuke explained. She went on to speak about the patents filed by corporate interests on wild rice, which is indigenous to the northern plain states and an important resource in her own community on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. Calling this attempt to privatize genetic strains of plants “biocolonialism” and “biopiracy,” LaDuke observed sardonically, “I am someone who fundamentally believes that patents are for toasters, not for living things.”
As a seasoned activist, LaDuke did not want to leave the audience simply with a laundry list of unresolved problems or a paralyzing sense of their intractability. “I told you a little bit about the state of affairs of native communities. What perhaps I did not impart is the state of resilience and what we have going for us.” She spoke about a wide range of initiatives and organizing strategies within native communities: coalition-building at the international level and working for international accords, and codifying indigenous knowledge at the tribal level. She also highlighted the work that is taking place at every level to build and sustain the capacity to effect change, arguing that, “In some ways it’s easier to organize in our communities, as crazy as some of our communities may be, [because] we are all related. And so you don’t have to do a lot of introductions.”
LaDuke stressed the critical role of all sorts of coalitions and the work they do across boundaries of every variety. Intergenerational relationships and trust within native communities are critical in shaping and sustaining organizing work. Moreover, the ability to leverage information, both independently and through strategic alliances, is central: “We got pretty adept at corporate research, and we’ve got friends who do better corporate research. So we get an idea of what exactly they are misrepresenting themselves as. And we are capable to build those alliances and to build our legal and community strategies out of that.” In addition, the ability to link the struggles of native peoples in one part of the world with those of peoples elsewhere provides a sense of solidarity and shared goals. “We are . . . quite engaged in our analysis of the relationship between indigenous people’s struggles here, and indigenous people’s struggles elsewhere. For instance, whether it is the Ogoni [of Nigeria] or whether it is the U’wa in Colombia. Their situation is not that different than ours; it may be a different country, but exactly the same sets of dynamics.”
LaDuke emphasized the need to work locally to find both the practical and the spiritual resources for sustaining the struggle. “You must shore up your traditional practices in your communities to ensure that that healing process is intact. That you are on your way to remembering who you are, and putting aside some of your sorrow and finding some resolve.” Focusing on the epidemic of type 2 diabetes among Native Americans as an example of the need to tap into traditional practices and ways, LaDuke pointed out that one-third of the people over 40 in her community suffer from this disease. “What is the answer to that?” she asked. “There are two things that are the answer: . . . Answer number one is get your butt out, get some exercise. I don’t mean to just say that, but that’s the truth. Because if you used to garden and now if you ride around in your car, you’re not doing anything. . . . The second thing is eat your traditional foods. That’s the second answer. Because those traditional foods were genetically – we are intended to eat those foods. And the rapid transition from . . . buffalo meat, wild rice, seaweed, salmon to macaroni-and-cheese food of poverty . . . is what caused our diabetes.” Her community’s response to the epidemic includes everything from growing flint corn to distribute to elderly diabetics in the community to trying to “decolonize our kids’ tastes” and growing food that is not genetically modified.
LaDuke closed her presentation with a lively account of her recent trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation, which has the distinction of being the most impoverished county in the nation. Its poverty stands in stark contrast to its resource richness – in this case, the presence of the renewable resource of wind. “It turns out that the Great Plains [are] the Saudi Arabia of wind power. . . . The Great Plains . . . lo and behold, the Indians communities on the Great Plains, those reservations are the windiest places on the Great Plains. Isn’t that funny how that worked out? So I was out on Pine Ridge on Tuesday or Wednesday; I go out to Pine Ridge Reservation where we’re putting up these two wind generators and . . . it’s blowing and I can hardly get out of my car. And I was like – holy buckus, this is where you want to put up a wind tower! And that is exactly right. So it turns out that these Indian communities that have faced vast environmental injustices from past policies happen to be the windiest communities in the country. And there are 23 Indian reservations that have 350 gigawatts of wind potential. Gigawatts of wind potential. Now, I know you guys are saying, ‘What the hell is a gigawatt?’ But present U.S.-installed electrical capacity is 600 gigawatts. The wind potential of twenty-three Indian reservations: 350 gigawatts. That’s a lot of power. Now, that doesn’t mean we want to be a wind energy colony. But that means that there is something in there that we are talking about.”
